Can’t empty Evolution Trash bin – Error while expunging folder

I don’t know it’s a bug or not but ‘Error While expunging folder‘ error message in Evolution is very annoying. You can’t empty your Trash bin mean if you don’t solve your evolution local database will become bigger and bigger. There are few solutions you can get from the Internet.

I wrote this article for easier solution with very clear instructions.

As you can see from the below picture, at the bottom screen, this error suddenly occur when I tried to empty my Evolution trash (File > Empty Trash).

Now, I will show you how to fix this problem.

First thing first, back up your emails. In case, a worst thing happen you still have a back up.

From the main menu choose (File > Backup Settings).

Select any folder where you want to put your backup file and type a filename.

I suggest to start with ‘Year-Month-Date-description‘ format file name. It will make you easier for tracing at the time you need in the future.

The backup process is in about to begin. Press ‘yes‘ button to start the process.

Backup process is on progress.

After you backup your emails, close your evolution.

Now open your file browser.

Go to evolution/mail/local folder. My location is ‘/home/taufanlubis/.evolution/mail/local‘, your one is only different after /home/your_one/…………..

The folder is hidden so you have to set your file browser to enable ‘Show hidden files‘.

Select ‘View > Show hidden files‘ to enable it then go to evolution folder.

Select any files that start with ‘.cmeta‘ and ‘.index‘.

DON”T select ‘.data‘ files.

After you select the files, click right mouse button and choose ‘Move to Trash‘.

After you deleted the files, open again your evolution.

Now, you can empty your trash.

As you can see below, the process is success.

As I said, you need to back up your emails first. Because, the process it may not 100% success.

When I did my one, I hope the whole process is success but I still got one email that is irrecoverably corrupted.

Well, hope that this article is clear enough and help you to solve the problem.

4 Responses

Taufan Lubis.
Don’t worry about my last comment, I solved it myself.
Your cmeta location did not work in my Ubuntu. However it did work when I found the correct location. It is as follows.
(YOUR HOME FOLDER)/local/share/evolution/mail/local/.#evolution.sbd.Trash.cmeta
I thought I’d comment here in case others have this issue.
I’m using Gnome 2.32.1
and Ubuntu 11.04 – the Natty Narwhal
and Evolution 2.32.2
Cheers
Davecontact@goanahplaygames.com

Thanks Dave I recently upgraded os and when I restored from backup none of my mail was there. Contacts and folders where but not the mail. And I could not empty the trash. after following your advice not only can I empty the trash,
all of mail is there.
Jerry C Lunsford